A couple of weeks ago, I went to a work-related conference in Bern, Switzerland, and was fortunate enough to have a couple of days’ walking in the mountains at Saas Fee beforehand. (Thank you, Peter!)
I had skiied there before, but never visited at this time of year. It really is a very pretty spot.
Better views than the average working week, I think.
Malham, in Yorkshire, is a splendid place, which I’d never visited until we stayed there last night. It’s a pretty and charming little village, with a bubbling stream running through it, and one or two very nice pubs.
But, take a short walk through the green, rolling countryside in one direction, and you come to Malham Cove, a very impressive limestone cliff.
A path with some good stairs takes you to the top of the cliff, where the limestone has eroded into other unexpected features.
An occasional delicate flower nestles in the indentations, protected from the sometimes dramatic weather.
If, on the other hand, you head out of the village in the opposite direction, a path through some fields eventually enters a little wooded valley, which takes you first to Janet’s Foss:
And then, a little higher up, to Gordale Scar.
And between all these dramatic sites…?
Sheep grazing in bucolic peace beside gently winding streams.
Montmartre, Paris, March 2019
Just before Christmas, Tilly (my spaniel) and I went to the Dordogne and back in our campervan. I made a video about it, which, while it may be of interest only to travel vlog and ‘van life’ enthusiasts, does have a bit of novelty value, because I filmed it on a spherical (360-degree) camera.
This means that after you’ve watched it, you can go back and watch it again from a completely different angle and see what was happening behind you!
I’ll put the link here, rather than embedding it, because this is something you want to watch on the YouTube site. Or, better still, in the YouTube app on your tablet, or phone, or VR headset…
If I had had more time, I would have made it shorter 🙂
This was really just an experiment for me, and I learned a great deal about the challenges and opportunities of filming and editing this particular medium, which I may write about in due course.
Newhaven this morning, shortly after I disembarked from the Dieppe ferry.
The sky over my campsite yesterday morning; I hadn’t seen any blue up there for quite some time!
And the sky over the same campsite as I returned to it in the evening:
My pitch was just under the darkest bit at the bottom right.
It soon settled down to the standard grey rainclouds again afterwards, though!
It’s good to know,
As the north winds blow,
That there’s plenty of eau,
And the eau is chaud.
I’m in the valley of the VĂ©zère river, just north of the Dordogne. It’s been raining almost all day, but the moisture really adds vibrance to the splendid colours of the trees.
Fangorn
We met some local residents…
No, really! I’m very ferocious too!
Then we had a final brief pause in the rain, just in time for a dog-walk just before sunset.
Tilly (my spaniel) and I are in a very nice restaurant not far from Perigueux. We’re the only ones here, having walked over from the campervan, which is parked in an almost-empty campsite. Over the last couple of days, we’ve visited many very pretty villages, where almost everything has been closed. Not a petit-dĂ©jeuner or a cafĂ©-au-lait to be had anywhere.
Now, I presumed this was just because of the time of year and because temperatures have been below zero for several days, only creeping above it today in order to allow for a steady rain.
But the proprietor doesn’t blame the climate, he blames the ‘gilets jaunes’. Normally, he says, there are visitors, including English and Germans, throughout the year. But they’ve seen the news, and they’re staying away. “Bordeaux aujourd’hui…”, he says, “c’est une catastrophe”.
I’ve seen a few protestors. At Dieppe on Weds, they were stopping all the lorries at several roundabouts, but I was always waved through with a cheery smile. Near Limoges today, they seemed just to be acting as traffic policemen, directing the traffic to make their presence felt. The only things I’ve seen burning were needed to warm frozen fingers.
Away from the big cities, I’ve seen nothing except the most mild expressions of discontent, like this decoration of a hydrant in a small farming village:
Roughly translated, it says, “Father Christmas’s sleigh runs on diesel.. a too-expensive fuel. No presents this year.”
So, no, this probably wouldn’t have been the week to visit any big cities. But in the countryside, visitors are currently a scarce resource and so are particularly welcome. If there’s anybody still around to do the welcoming, that is..
We went to Lincolnshire last weekend. When I told some friends of our plans beforehand, they said, “Lincolnshire? Really? For a whole weekend?”, or words to that effect. And I must confess to being somewhat apprehensive myself, though we had visited Lincoln itself before and knew that to be a lovely city.
But there’s lots of good stuff in Lincolnshire.
They have some very impressive churches, for one thing. In addition to Lincoln Cathedral (above), we visited Boston, from where some people once set sail to found a colony in Massachusetts.
Boston’s name comes from “Botolph’s Town”, and the church of St Botolph is almost a cathedral itself.
It’s been informally known as the ‘Boston Stump‘ for the last, oh, seven hundred years or so, a name which hardly conveys the fact that it’s really awfully tall. We can assert this, having climbed it, via a very narrow staircase. They let us in at the bottom and shut the door behind us; the only way was up…
Emerging at the top, you can walk around the rather narrow walkway with a lowish handrail, before descending via a second similar staircase.
A fun and very memorable experience, but definitely not recommended for those suffering from corpulence, claustrophobia, or vertigo!
Lincoln itself is built on quite a steep hill, but much of the county is very flat, so Lincolnshire’s drainage ditches are almost as impressive as its churches.
There are lots of marvellous windmills, used both for pumping and for corn-grinding.
And here’s another cool thing you don’t find in every county: a bubble-car museum!
We visited a lovely beach at Huttoft, as the sun was setting.
Tilly did feel, however, that they had rather too many seagulls, so did her best to rectify that problem.
We stayed at “Long Acres“, a delightful and well-run campsite which suffers only from not being very close to most of the major attractions. As a result it’s very peaceful, especially at this time of the year. And if you enjoy looking at bubble-cars as much as we do, they at least are not far away!
I haven’t talked about the quaint teashop we visited in the pretty village of Tealby, or The Usher Gallery in Lincoln, or the Sibsey Trader Windill… But all in all, we had a very enjoyable weekend in our trusty campervan.
“The Ferry has Departed” — Craignish, Scotland, in July
© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser
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